Sudden lameness, obvious distress

[Sarahh_Janeyy]

Enrofloxacin is banned in poultry by the FDA, although some vets will prescribe it for reproductive disorders. If that bothers you, you may not want to use it. It is not banned for dogs or cats however, just chickens. The similar antibiotic cipro is used in people.

It doesn't bother me, we're not going to ever eat her eggs again at this point. I imagine it bothers him as he's only ever prescribed sulfatrim and has said he is limited in what he can prescribe for chickens, knowing that we have had 2 (now passed) chickens with severe infections. One ended up having a ruptured oviduct, and the other was the immunocompromised one I mentioned already. I am going to ask him about it, of course, and we did order the enrofloxacin from jedd's though it won't be here until Friday. Pepper has an appointment tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon. Btw, I don't know if I mentioned but she is drinking on her own (or if I put water in front of her) and she is eating the moving prey items. She ate 100 live crickets yesterday and is eating the live mealworms this morning. Doesn't seem interested in any of the normal pellet or scratch foods, however.

 

[Sarahh_Janeyy]

Update:
It's been almost a month. We never ended up using Enrofloxacin. She was on Sulfatrim almost a month. Once she stopped laying, she seemed like she was getting better, but now she seems unwell in a different way and I don't know what to make of it. She's had fluid infusions with the vet 1-2 times a week to make sure she's hydrated. We have been tube feeding her medicine/emeraid with nutridrench, probiotics, and b12, 2x a day. After she went out of lay by reducing her photoperiod, she seemed to be doing a bit better- talking to us, jumping up to roost on things, eating bugs we gave her. But then, she has stopped wanting to eat things. I would introduce something new, and sometimes she'd pick at it. But she won't eat her solid foods (kalmbach pellets, seed mix, harrison's) nor the insects (crickets, black soldier fly larvae, mealworms). I don't know if she doesn't want to eat because maybe her throat hurts from the tube feedings, but she's not on meloxicam anymore so it's unlikely that her tummy is upset. She will look at food, then shake her head as if it smelled bad or something. She has been less active, just wanting to go to sleep in the corner, she has her eyes closed a lot, and kinda shakes her head. The vet thinks she's coming out of things but I am skeptical because of her behavior change. We started bringing her outside for a few hours to get some sun and be able to dust bathe the last few days. She was interested in eating some weeds, but nothing else. She has another fluid appointment today. I just feel like she's going downhill the way my last bird that passed did, back in December. She got through the painful part and we stopped her laying by keeping her inside, but I don't know what is wrong that she won't eat and is still passing mostly urea stools. I was a little worried that the sulfatrim had wiped out her good gut bacteria. We've been giving probiotics with her tube feeds, but benebac avian is no longer available so we had to switch to a new brand (we've tried 2 since then and the vet doesn't really like either of them). Lemme know if anyone has any thoughts.

 

[Eggcessive]

Sorry that she is not doing better. It sounds like she has a pretty serious problem, most likely salpingitis, that she won’t recover from. I usually give it a good try to nurse them back to health, but at some point, I let them decide if they wish to eat and drink, or not. I have used my dog’s probiotics (Purina PoPlan) on chickens. Your vet probably sell those, and Probios powder is sold at most feed stores. Your vet bills must be huge. Let us know if she gets better or worsens.

 

[Sarahh_Janeyy]

Sorry that she is not doing better. It sounds like she has a pretty serious problem, most likely salpingitis, that she won’t recover from. I usually give it a good try to nurse them back to health, but at some point, I let them decide if they wish to eat and drink, or not. I have used my dog’s probiotics (Purina PoPlan) on chickens. Your vet probably sell those, and Probios powder is sold at most feed stores. Your vet bills must be huge. Let us know if she gets better or worsens.

Lol, you have no idea.. It's a good thing we don't have kids...
Yeah, I have been worried she won't recover, but doing our best anyway. We have 2 different avian-specific ones, he said they both have a bunch of probiotics that aren't avian-specific in there, he'd probably say the same about the dog and cat ones.

 

[Sarahh_Janeyy]

Oh, also, though he wouldn't prescribe the enrofloxin since it's against the FDA, he said he used to a long time ago when it was legal but they ran into a lot of issues from the medicine itself, especially kidney issues, so he wouldn't have suggested using it anyway.

 

[Sarahh_Janeyy]

Sooo, noticed that one of our other hens, Hennifer, was breathing heavier than usual/the other birds when at rest. She had been sitting on my lap the last few days, slightly unusual for her. So I brought her to the vet on Friday when we were getting Pepper her fluids. Turns out Hennifer is having a respiratory issue and the vet was glad I brought her in. Now both girls are on Tylosin and Hennifer is Pepper's emotional support friend. I really hope the Tylosin helps.. They both were eating together yesterday and I was so happy I cried. Still worried about them, but that was encouraging. Hennifer has fluid sounds in her air sacs and "pulmonary crackling". Pepper also had the beginnings of the crackling sound. So maybe Pepper has been dealing with two things..

 

[Eggcessive]

Let us know how she gets along.

 

[Sarahh_Janeyy]

Another appointment today for fluids. Vet said they are both up in weight (they have been eating, hooray!) but Hennifer still sounds bad/is still showing increased respiration. Since Pepper has started eating (encouraging), he thinks they are probably both dealing with Mycoplasma. It's just occurring to me now that I should have asked him to test them. We had tested for mycoplasma before in another chicken a year ago but it was negative. We have another appointment on Friday and he wants to do xrays.

 

[Eggcessive]

If they have had symptoms for awhile the testing could be negative, but hope you will get an answer. It is good to know what you are dealing with.

 

[Sarahh_Janeyy]

So, Friday we did radiographs of Hennifer and vet called Tuesday evening to talk about it, unfortunately not good news. I know this thread was originally about Pepper, but..

So vet saw what looked like multiple tumors, probably ovarian, and her internal organs are displaced. This is probably why she is having trouble breathing/has reduced breathing capacity. He said she may also have associated egg yolk peritonitis if the tumors are impacting her reproductive tract. Obviously, none of this is good news.. He is going to try to get fluid out of the coelom and see if that offers any relief, but he thinks it's more like tumors causing pressure rather than fluid. If he can get any fluid out, he'll lab confirm if there are tumor cells or egg yolk. We are devastated of course, since there isn't much we can do. Vet said surgery on chickens is already 50/50 because of how they respond to anesthesia, but he think it's more likely we'd lose her because of her reduced ability to breathe. It's hard to see this chicken that is doing pretty well otherwise - good weight, eating normally, acting normally, aside from heavy breathing - and knowing she will go downhill. I tried looking up supplements to help with possible tumor growth, but there is a lot out there. Poultry DVM had a few suggestions, and I saw a few things here on this forum. If anyone has suggestions for supplements, I'd definitely try them.
https://poultrydvm.com/condition/ovarian-cancer

As for Pepper, I had gone away on Saturday and left my partner to take care of the sickies. I was not hopeful. The vet said she really needed fluids as she is just constantly dehydrated, and if it was his bird he'd give her subq fluids every day. But he isn't approving of me doing it myself, so he said to just tube her plain water as much as I can throughout the day. He also put both girls back on meloxicam every other day. I came home last night and Pepper was actually up and about and eating - I couldn't believe it from how I left her on Saturday. So maybe the meloxicam + lots of water is doing the thing. We have our next vet appointment on Friday, and it'll have been a whole week since he's seen them.